The old Devala law-book — fragments 1: Purity and conduct
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Purity and conduct
1.1
First, facing east, he should wash his feet slowly — facing north for a rite to the gods, south for one to the ancestors; having tied his top-knot and put on two clean washed garments, silent and composed, (he should sip water,) not rising and not looking about.
1.2
In the morning he should always void excrement and urine facing north, in the evening facing south; at the twilights he should avoid it.
1.3
Not in a pond, well or river, a cow-pen, a shrine, water, a road or ashes, in fire, a pleasant place or a cremation ground should he void excrement or urine.
1.4
One who knows dharma should not use the right hand for cleaning below, nor clean above the navel with the left hand.
1.5
Such purification is prescribed after discharging semen, urine or excrement, after eating and after the fatigue of a journey; elsewhere a lighter one is found.
1.6
After eating he should remove what sticks to the teeth and then sip water; what sticks to the teeth and cannot be removed he should regard like the teeth themselves. He should not try too often to remove it, for if a wound is made by pricking with a straw there is great impurity.
1.7
Woollen, silk, goat-hair, patterned silk, linen and fine cloth need little purification: by drying, sprinkling and the like.
1.8
A wise man should perform a religious rite in a garment washed by himself, never in one washed by a washerman, nor in an unwashed new one.
1.9
A man who touches one who has touched an impure person, or a second (in the chain), is purified by washing hands and feet with water and sipping.
1.10
If one touches another's human bone, fat, excrement, menstrual blood, urine, semen, marrow or blood, he becomes pure by bathing, wiping off the stains and sipping; touching his own, he is purified by wiping.
1.11
Having touched a Śvapāka, an outcaste, a cripple, a madman, a corpse-bearer, a woman who has given birth, a midwife, a menstruating woman, or village dogs, cocks and pigs, a man is purified at once by bathing with his clothes and head.
1.12
Water on the ground that does not smell, has taste, is clear and is not exhausted by a cow's drinking is held the purest; or water drawn duly in pure vessels is praised; but water drawn and kept overnight one should throw away.
1.13
If a putrid or burst corpse is seen in a well (after drinking from it), one should drink milk for three days; for a human corpse three times as much. A Brahmin who knowingly drinks water from a Caṇḍāla's well or vessel should perform the Sāntapana; if by mistake he is purified in three days.
1.14
Impure ground is purified in five or four ways, defiled ground in two or three, soiled ground in one. Burning, digging, smearing, sowing and washing by rain: these are the five kinds of purification of the ground.
1.15
Where a woman gives birth, where someone dies or is burnt, where Caṇḍālas have lived, where there is excrement and the like: such ground, full of filth, is called impure.
1.16
He should not curse himself in anger, nor sleep by day when healthy, nor scratch the ground with his nails, nor lie down among cows at night; he should not speak of another river at a river, of another mountain on a mountain, nor praise another (place) when at a holy ford or shrine.
1.17
Wood for the fire is not theft, grass for cattle is not theft, wild fruit is not theft, water from the ground is not theft.
1.18
Untruth is of two kinds, falsehood and breach of word: stating otherwise what one has learnt, seen, heard or done is falsehood; not acknowledging what one has earlier agreed to is breach of word.
1.19
One should not, from hatred or greed, abandon father, brother, son, daughter, sister, daughter-in-law, or a wife who has not fallen. The abandonment of a mother is nowhere taught in the treatises: even fallen or accused, a mother does not deserve to be abandoned.
1.20
The householder is of two kinds, the wanderer and the settled; of these the wanderer is superior, because he avoids officiating, teaching, accepting gifts and hoarding wealth; the settled one keeps to the six works, has servants, cattle, a house, village, wealth and grain, and follows the world.
1.21
The Brahmin by birth only, the Brahmin, the learned one, the expounder, the bhrūṇa, the one like a seer, the seer and the sage: these eight kinds of Brahmin are declared in the Veda; each later one is better than the former by distinction of learning and conduct.
1.22
He should not live by medicine, astrology, acting, carting, oil-pressing, liquor, scales, or by being his son's teacher; nor by lac, madder, meat, honey, metal or poison; by such work even an Ārya becomes a Vṛṣala.
Linked texts (1)
- Devalasmṛti (fragments) — Sanskrit